1. The “2017 K-POP World Festival,” the world’s largest K-POP festival, co-hosted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Korean Broadcasting System (KBS), and the Korean Culture and Information Service, and sponsored by the city of Changwon, Kyongnam Bank, and the Korea Tourism Organization, will take place at Changwon Civil Stadium at 7 p.m. on September 29, with an audience of about 20,000 people.

o The K-POP World Festival, which marks its seventh this year, is the world’s Hallyu (popularity of Korean pop culture) festival joined by foreigners who love Korean pop songs. Contenders competed fiercely in the preliminaries held in 88 regions in 72 countries this year.

o Among them, teams from a total of 13 countries (Nigeria, Russia, Madagascar, Malaysia, the US, Vietnam, Singapore, India, Indonesia, Canada, Turkey, Peru and Hungary) made it to the final round after being reviewed by experts.

※ The final round will be broadcast by KBS 2TV at 24:00 on October 14.
※ A documentary on the finalists will be broadcast by KBS 2TV at 24:00 on October 20.

2. The festival will also feature various performances by Bangtan Boys, TWICE, Ailee, MONSTA X, ASTRO, and NCT127 to encourage participants. Further details on the K-POP World Festival are available on its official website (http://kbsworld.kbs.co.kr/sub_area/kpopfestival/site_2017/).

3. As part of the festival, a meeting on public diplomacy hosted by the Foreign Ministry will be held under the theme “soft power in international relations.” It will be attended by diplomats and journalists in the ROK from the countries whose contenders made it to the final of the K-POP World Festival, as well as the youth public diplomacy team.

4. Going forward, the Foreign Ministry will continue to carry out cultural diplomacy in a way that uses soft power and wins hearts of people in cooperation with major media outlets and provincial governments in order to help Hallyu fans around the world pay more attention to and better understand the ROK’s various cultures.


* unofficial translation